kandinsky, I think you did well to hang on- do u know what caused the 2nd half problems- was it just the hills? When I look back, my bad miles I think were a hydration/nutrition issue, but thankfully I was able to get past in. Was great to meet u and ur wife and puppy afterwards- we shall have to meet up at our suspectIve parkruns.

To be honest I've a tendancy to over analyse these things so have tried not to get too caught up in it all....however

I don't think the hills were really an issue as I've tackled longer/steeper climbs in most of my longs runs leading up to Halstead and I'm struggling to identify any obvious shortcomings but suspect it's an aggregation of many small factors.

Obviously my pacing over the first half was a factor but when I look at my paces in training and particularly at the Brentwood Half this should have been achievable but in hindsight everything has felt a bit off in my preperations over the last week or so and I probably should have been more flexible in my approach and revised my target.

I'd purposefully avoided looking at my watch as I didn't want to beat myself up anymore than I already was and I was genuinely (and pleasantly surprised) to see 4:14 on the clock at the finish line.

I'm inclined to put it down as "one of those days", I'll be back next year and I think the fact that it is an amazing testament to the organisers and supporters just how much I managed to enjoy myself depite the pain and dissapointment.

Ha ha ha! It must have been the vaseline offer that put a smile on my face!

It was a strange day for me, on the one hand I crashed and burned rather spectacularly in the second half missing my target time by over 30 mins in the end.

However, once I'd made peace with the fact that it wasn't going to be my day I concentrated on making the most out of what is a cracking event and managed to put my dissapointment aside and enjoy myself.

Given what I went through yesterday I'm actually rather chuffed to be able to consider 4:14 a "bad" time, I ended up having to work bloody hard for it and I'm already looking forward to coming back next year to have another go (and remembering which stations I'd sent my drinks to)

Well done everyone, there's some cracking results for some but a great effort by all.